Our God
is a God of second chances. And not just second: third, fourth… there isn’t an
ordinal so high that it could limit God’s love, stop God from continue to reach
out to us, from bidding us cast our nets, and inviting us to breakfast; just as
Jesus does with Peter, even after Peter denied him. The image of the net, full
to bursting with fish, but not bursting, is an image of how plentiful and
limitless God’s ongoing will to reach out to us is. A lot of commentators over
the centuries have spilled a lot of ink (or, I guess, now, worn out a lot of
keys on a lot of keyboards) trying to figure out quite why there were 153 fish.
Some of these explanations are kind of fun. St. Jerome claimed that there were
153 species of fish, so 153 fish was a symbol for the church containing the
full diversity of humanity. Unfortunately, there aren’t just 153 species of
fish, and no one at that time seemed to think that either, except people that
wanted to get this meaning out of John. Other
people have tried gematria, which is an ancient technique whereby you assign a
number to each letter of the Hebrew alphabet and add up all the letters in a
word or phrase. If you do that to the phrase “church of love,” you get 153,
which is really cute. The problem is that neither John no anywhere else in the
New Testament is the phrase “church of love” used, and there are all kinds of
different phrases that would give you that number. My personal favorite
explanation is that 153 is the sum of all the whole numbers from 1 to 17, and
17 is the sum of 10 and 7, two important numbers that represented fullness
(think 10 commandments, 7 days of the week).
These
explanations are cute, and fun, and some of them encode really beautiful
messages. But, they miss the point. You might have seen this guy James
Holzhauer on Jeopardy, who’s been winning huge sums. When given the
chance to bet money, he’ll often make his bets significant numbers in his life
(like his wedding anniversary), but for all he loves cute numbers, he even more
loves winning lots of money, and he doesn’t let himself be limited by cute
numbers. Neither does God. Only God’s aim isn’t winning lots of money, it’s the
sanctification of humanity, it’s restoring us to our original friendship with
God. And God doesn’t let himself be limited by cute numbers. 153 fish in a net
isn’t meant to make us think about 153, but to just make ourselves say, “Wow,
that’s a lot of fish!” And then step back, and marvel, and say, “Wow, God gives
us a lot of chances.” And then from stepping back and marveling, we don’t stop
that, but use the force of that wow to cast our nets, to jump into the water,
and to feed God’s sheep.
Let’s
think about some of those responses. I think it’s important that Jesus doesn’t
just magically beam fish into the disciples’ boat. He invites them to cast
their net, and they do. God doesn’t force grace on us by magically beaming
something into our boats. I mean, God’s God, and God can do what God wants;
when he confront Paul on the way to Damascus, that was pretty forceful, but I
think what he heard from John is more typical of how God acts. He gently
invites us to something, which we discern through listening to our lives, to what
seems to invite us to true spirit of consolation. And he invites us to act, to
play a part in discovering the riches of his grace for ourselves.
And
sometimes that makes us do crazy looking things like jumping in the water. Let’s
note that that’s completely ridiculous. Peter is not dressed for swimming, and
a rowboat could get to shore much quicker than a swimmer. Love makes us do some
pretty ridiculous things. One commentator I read this week even suggested that
Peter’s reason for jumping in the water might have been to get away from Jesus,
because he was still afraid of the one he had denied. I don’t know. Maybe that
was part of his initial motivation, but if it was, he realizes in the water
that he needs to go, he needs to go to Jesus, and he arrives on the shore.
On the
shore where there’s a reminder of his betrayal: a charcoal fire. Peter had
denied Jesus three times standing beside a charcoal fire, and now he will be
asked to profess his love for Jesus three times, standing beside a charcoal
fire. Our God is a God of second chances.
Recall
the first question Jesus asks Peter. Not just “Do you love me,” but “Do you
love me more than these?” Now, it’s not clear what exactly that means. Is it “Do
you love me more than you love these other disciples” or “Do you love me more
than these other disciples love me?” If it’s the latter, this gives Peter not
just a second chance after his betrayal, but a second chance after his rash statement
at the last supper, when he had said, “Even though all fall away, I will not.”
Essentially, “I love you more than them.” Note Peter’s answer; he doesn’t try
to compete anymore, he doesn’t refer to the other disciples, he just says, “I
love you.”
That
could be. Or it could be that Jesus is asking “Do you love me more than you
love these others?” Again, Peter avoids the comparison game, and just says, “I
love you.” If this is what Jesus means, I think that’s again the right answer.
Dorothy Day once said that you love Jesus as much as the person you love the
least. I think Jesus would say something similar, because he tells Peter not to
do something for him, but to feed his sheep, feed his lambs. Jesus, the lamb
who was slain, so identifies himself with us, the little sheep, that to love
Jesus is to feed Jesus’ sheep.
There’s
always another chance, whether we’ve denied, whether we’ve boasted, whether we’ve
tried to do loving things, but done them in ineffective ridiculous ways. There’s
always another chance, to cast our nets, to be overawed at the bounty of God’s
grace, and feed his sheep.
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